Posted
by
timothy
on Friday August 14, 2009 @01:11AM
from the classic-multitasking dept.

srjh writes "In the Australian Federal Government's latest assault on the internet, draft legislation has been released that allows network operators to intercept communications to ensure that their networks are being 'appropriately used.' Such legislation is particularly important given the interference of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy in a recent copyright lawsuit against iiNet, one of the largest ISPs in the country. Conroy called prominent filtering opponent iiNet's inaction over copyright infringement 'stunning,' whereas iiNet claimed that it would be illegal under current Australian law to intercept its users' downloads. While this latest legislation appears to be a concession of that point, the government is said to be watching the case closely and along with attempts to introduce a three-strikes law in Australia, it appears the law will be changed if the government dislikes the outcome of the case. The internet villain of the year just continues to earn his title."

From watching him in various public speeches, I begin to suspect that this Pommie [wikipedia.org] wanna-be Aussie Senator Conroy [wikipedia.org] actually believes he is doing the right thing and genuinely believes he is fighting for the good of the children, and that's all mate.
Ignorant, naive, incompetent, complacent or actively plotting (take your pick - nobody knows but him) that the tools he is pushing for will become powerful weapons of political and corporate-profit maintaining control later on down that long track.
"I would use this ring from a desire to do good... But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine"... If only Senator Conroy could be so wise.

It's pandering to the Australian Christian Lobby, who are a bunch of self-important wankers and have far too much power for a country where 28% of the population puts down 'atheist/agnostic/no-religion/blank' on the census.

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1358912.htm [abc.net.au]
Family First: A Federal Crusade
Should give slashdot readers some ideas about the decade of work that was put into subverting both of the main Australian parties.

A note to readers outside Australia, although this group call themselves Christian they are really so far from the mainstream that they would mistake Jesuits for Communists. I am sure that Jesus would instead call them the merchants in the temple.

Actually you can assume most of it it is coming from Senator Fielding, an odd character from the "More Cash for Jesus and bugger the poor because God hates them" side of things. The government needs his vote and you can expect to see all kinds of weird censorship legislation talked about but not actually tabled until the next election. Some of the pressure groups that were previously pushing for the IMHO stupid filtering idea have woken up to the idea that it would be far better appointing the 36th polic

Danse De Rue Savate, the Dance of the Street, is named after the question often asked to start a fight â" do you what to dance? It is aristocratic in style with back alley brutality.
http://www.americanroughandtumble.com/Savate.html [americanro...tumble.com]

When I first heard about Savate, it was described to me as "a combination of fighting and dancing... moves that look like ballet but can be very violent."

Watch this video [youtube.com] of a Savate fight from 1934 and tell me honestly that some of those kicks don't look like ballet moves. That's what I've seen in pictures and video. But if you look at this more modern video [youtube.com], you can see that it much more closely resembles kickboxing or Muay Thai nowadays.

No it isn't, because Liberal will implement basically the same polcies. We don't have a viable third party so for the forseeable future we will be at the mercy of the same bunch of goons (Labour/Liberal).

You have the Pirate Party. I voted for them in Germany because of exactly this. Even if they don't win anything, they disrupt the other parties realities strongly enough, for them to be forced to change, to not lose even more people to the Pirate Party.

With the Emissions Trading Scheme, being voted down yesterday the Rudd government could be on it's way to an early election. The Rudd government has not got a majority, relying preferences from the Greens to secure a parliament majority. The Greens are opposed to both the Internet Filter and the Three Strikes law. Rudd and Labour will do an about face as soon as it looks like they are losing the support of the Greens.

This is just more scare mongering reporting in preparation for the upcoming iinet/AFACT (MPIAA in disguise).

That's assuming they don't have the support of the Liberals - the traditional social conservatives in Australia. They've known all along that the Greens aren't on board, so it's the Liberals they're relying on to back the government.

Labor is much stricter on crossing the floor than the Liberals and the threat of an early election might push them into avoiding any double-dissolution triggers.

And if an early election is held? Labor likely takes the Senate and pushes through the changes anyway.

The Libs wont support this on the principal that they don't support the Labour govt. It sucks just how polarised the Australian government has gotten. I think that it is an incredibly good thing that no party got a majority in the last election, we would have been screwed by ether side for sure.

As always the opposition party is the opposition. The will always side with the general public to gain votes, gain seats and gain a higher pay packet. What voting for the Greens well and truly demonstrates is the real power of the ballot box in Australia and the ability of Australian politics to resist corporate pressure at this stage not enough but it is growing.

Three strikes, is dead in Australia, filtering is dying, ISP spying is a no show, all that is happening is the Australian government is being pressured by the US government and the not so free trade agreement, which is basically being used as political blackmail.

It looks very likely that the greens will gain a lot of public support because the right wing abused their power not so long back and the left wing just ain't left enough. Right and left is really starting to look like minority rich (plus gullible poor) versus everybody else (middle class the survivors and working class with a brain). The internet is driving power and control back to the people and there seems to be a real fight on around seizing back that power by corporations and mass media, that had it for 30 years and they really do not want to let go.

Double dissolution elections have *never* been kind to Australian governments who force them.

It starts to smell a little to much like brute force when a sitting government dissolves the whole parliament and calls an election simply because they don't want to accept the will of the Senate.

Australians place a lot of trust and faith in the Senate and where they see the Lower House as nothing more than slimy untrustworthy politicians they view the Senate as a much higher and esteemed authority - and the senators as trustworthy "protectors" of Australian democracy (more or less).

So when a government goes against the Senate it'd better be damned sure of itself...

And some American now think: Labour, Liberal, Green. And they can not take a decision. See that more then two parties doesn't work.I live in a country with multiple states, languages and it DOES work, although a bit more complicated. To me it shows that it DOES work as politics should never be black or white, but instead it should be a lot of grey.

The libs and greens are voting against the filter, so yes the dentist-filter plan is dead in the water. But I wouldn't be surprised if the libs supported this copyright bill, which would be more than enough to get it through.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think I preferred Richard Alston, who had the international reputation of "Worlds Biggest Luddite", as IT minister. At least he was too incompetent to do much damage.

>It's bad that we have to choose between two parties, one who wants to be a dictator over my home life and one who wants to be a dictator over my work life.

Except we don't have to support one of two parties. Australia's first-past-the-post prefential voting system means if you vote for a small party (such as say the Australian Democrats), you can direct your preferences if they don't get elected -- effectively, vote for the party you want first, then vote for the lesser evils further down, and your vote still goes where you want it to.

you've described the voting system correctly in all but name - it is NOT first past the post. It IS preferential. First-past-the-post describes the one vote, winner takes all (without having the win the majority) system that is employed in the US.

His home state of Victoria of which he is an elected government representative has a law banning "altruistic surrogacy" - that is - having another woman carrying a fertilised egg to term then handing the baby over when it's born.

Disregarding any moral argument on the matter, it's criminally illegal in Senator Conroys home state. So what do he and his wife do? "Route around" the law by skipping over the border to New South Wales to have it organised WHILE STILL REPRESENTING VICTORIA IN PARLIAMENT.

So the Victorian minister Stephen Conroy doesn't think he should be subject to the laws of Victoria when he doesn't feel like it (notice he kept his seat in parliament and still lives in Victoria) and the hypocrite thinks he has the moral authority to make judgments to form controversial legislation affecting thousands?!

Convenient isn't it.

The more I learn about these Labour goons the less I like them.

Stupid law in Victoria in my opinion but, so is every law Conroy pushes regarding the Internet I wonder if he'll be understanding to anybody who ignores the federal laws that they don't like.

He is a hippocrit, but he was pushing the laws he thinks he was voted to push for. Personally I hope Rudd is just using him as a pawn tp push through certain legislation but will not actually be honoring the filter promis he made to Conroy. I really don't want libs in power again so soon.

Meanwhile, across the sea in the United States, the 'Land of the Free,' various employees of various music/movie/video game agencies are taking notes. They're following this with a keen eye. If it works in Australia, why can't it work here?

Pretty soon, files such as Bellsouth Sucks.txt and Comcast Blows.rtf will be blocked in the US due to 'copyright infringement.'

If an Australian engineer was to design a box that could you could buy/build to set up a nationwide mesh network (thereby eliminating ISPs and telco infrastructure from the loop), would you buy or build it?

What would be your preference?

a) An open source design that you build yourself.

b) An assembled and testbed box (for a price of course).

How much would you be prepared to pay for such a box (assembled and tested, ready to used)?

Straw poll:
If an Australian engineer was to design a box that could you could buy/build to set up a nationwide mesh network (thereby eliminating ISPs and telco infrastructure from the loop), would you buy or build it?

What would be your preference?

a) An open source design that you build yourself.

b) An assembled and testbed box (for a price of course).

A, of course, if its an open source design then multiple 3rd party companies can build them, test them and improve the design in order to compete w

And how do you propose to link this mesh network to other networks? Its not like you can just plug into the Southern Cross Cable or Australia-Japan Cable to get connectivity to the outside world. Nor can you just plug into fiber links between all the different isolated towns and cities that would be part of this network (and even if it was possible to string up enough wireless boxes to go from Sydney to Melbourne, the latency would be so big as to render it unusable).

There are a few groups such as http://www.air-stream.org.au/ [air-stream.org.au] this is a community network in Adelaide.It is legal to setup a wide area network but if you charge for it you are classified as an isp and are hevily regulated.

This Labor Australian government has been stunningly disappointing, and everyone I know thinks the same. There was a hope that Labor would bring a bit more enlightenment to a government that was previously seemed to be out of touch, but they have been infinitely worse. Who would have thought we would pine for the good old days?

This Labor Australian government has been stunningly disappointing, and everyone I know thinks the same. There was a hope that Labor would bring a bit more enlightenment to a government that was previously seemed to be out of touch, but they have been infinitely worse. Who would have thought we would pine for the good old days?

I'd be happy if we could get a polly who could skull a yardie, they don't have to be a record breaker like Hawke. Now days we cant find a blue arsed fly who can finish a middy, let

I just don't understand where this government's sentiment comes from!! I live in a country that is full of people who are easy going, enjoy life, and who are generally quite non-idealistic - we do not tend to have the passion for politics and causes and pep-talks that seems to drive a lot of US-centric life. And yet the government takes these crazy stands that are SO against the Australian way of living!!

Ditto. It's not as if anyone has asked for ISP-level internet filtering, and we haven't even had some huge scandal (real or manufactured) creating outrage (real or manufactured) resulting in the masses demanding protection from teh ebil interwebs. I just don't understand where this is coming from.
If I was a conspiracy nut (I'm not, honest...) it's as if The Master Puppeteers have realised that an idea like this from the Libs would be shot down by people objecting to moralising conservatives intruding in o

if it where a conspiracy they would have started by trying to introduce a law to mandate filtering technology to block something everyone would object to, lets say for example child pornography.then we would need some sort of legal precedent to extend the reach of the laws to not just filter things that should never exist but that which it makes commercial sense to block.then it would be easy to point and say, hey we have a real problem, lets introduce a law to fix it.

I can't help but notice one thing. If the same happened with Iran, N. Korea, China or any other political enemies of US, the media would be promoting more hatred towards those countries... would have tagged "tyranny" or "dictatorship", would have edited wikipedia pages about those countries to display false facts, would have created stories about "hackers" from those countries "stealing sensitive information from internet" (as if sensitive information is put on internet. oh wait! i'm sorry, i forgot. creati

I guarantee you that the Liberals (under Howard, Turnbul or anyone else who has a snowballs chance of being Liberal leader) would have supported this kind of "ISP as copyright cop" legislation had they won government instead of Rudd.

The big push for this stuff is comming from the commercial TV networks (7, 9 and 10), the Pay TV operators (i.e. Foxtel and all the various owners of the various channels) and the movie studios. All of these parties have been arguing that without some kind of "ISP as copyright cop" enforcement to stop piracy (why the same copyright legislation and court system that has served this nation for over 100 years is not suitable for this I fail to see), it will become more and more un-viable to continue to produce content in this country.

Along with trying to get ISPs to remove all pornography from the internet (laughable, yes, but if you look at the current legislation and current filtering policy, this is exactly what they want to do), the Australian government has been strongly backing copyright lawsuits against ISPs for not snooping on its users.

This isn't just "we're allowing you to monitor your own networks", it's "monitor your networks for us, or suffer the consequences".

When it comes to having a choice between private enterprise providing a good or service and the government providing that good or service,

I disagree, the government is accountable to me once every four years, a private corporation never has to ask for my consent or co-operation. In addition to this, the governement does not have a profit motive where as a corporation must not only be making a profit they must also be increasing shareholder value. So either way the money needed to run the service comes from my pocket, with the government I get a say in how well they are spending and they dont need to make increasing ammounts of profit on it.

The idea that a government is inherently inefficient is a misnomer, the same as the idea that a corporation is inherently efficient is a misnomer. Both are inherently neither. Government organisations like Medicare in Australia and our Canadian analogue provide better care and service for a lower cost then the US private health system. I pay A$500 a year for health care.

As for this bit of stupidity, it will never pass parliament as the internet filter never passed parliament, its already been voted down (thanks to the Green's), despite the fact that the trials are still ongoing (Conroy is permitted to waste taxpayer money on the trial unfortunately). The Rudd government is in a precarious position due to parliaments rejection of their Emissions Trading Scheme. The ETS may be enough to trigger a double dissolution of parliament, which at this point in time would not be entirely a bad thing.

I hope you're right mjwx, but your vote doesn't look like it ever mattered much to me. I left the Defence Signals Directorate, and subsequently Australia a decade ago because I saw from the inside just how simplistic it is for this particular agency to have new laws made, old laws modified, and more worryingly, just how much latitude they give themselves for interpretation of existing laws. I lived through a couple of royal commissions focused on the very departments I worked in, those investigations never

So, you are saying that you have no choice but to give your money to a particular ISP, no matter how abhorrent you find their practices? But with the government you can decide to stop giving them money any time you don't like what they do?

I wouldn't necessarily agree that our (Canadian) health care is any better than care provided in the US. Sure, if you don't have enough money, it's better than nothing, but if you can afford it or have insurance, the American system (when it doesn't randomly dismiss your claims) is often better in a lot of respects.

For instance, my parents took a 2 day trip down to the US last weekend for some shopping and my dad woke up at 2:30am the first night almost unable to breathe due to pulmonary embolisms. My mom,

You've got a say in what your government does? Where do you live and who made you believe that?

Let me tell you a story about why you are wrong, lets call it Work Choices,

Work Choices was the IR policy of the previous Fascist government (not to be confused with the current Fascist government) that stripped Australian workers of their rights, this policy was unpopular with the people who then made it clear this was the reason they were voting out the Liberal Facists. Howard, die Fuhrer zum Zeitpunkt, lost his job and Rudd, die aktuelle furher immediately scrapped Work Choices.

The Liberals will never utter those words again. They learned what it cost them. So yes, I have a say in what my government does, at the very least once every 4 years. It's called an election.

The thing with politicians is, they try until they get it through. They will not stop until they will have gotten what they want. No matter how often they have to try, no matter what shady tricks they have to use. If need be, they'll just ignore laws and do what they want. They'll get away with it because of their immunity. Three-strikes in France, censorship in Germany, databases in the UK, censorship in AU, etc. they all keep going until they get what they want, no matter how often they get turned down, they'll get it through bit by bit and there's nothing you can do about it.

Yes there is, often when an Australian politician loses an election, they are sacked. No matter how greedy a polly gets this will always, always be over-ridden by their sense of self preservation. It's the extremists who aren't greedy that are the problem but these guys will always be outnumbered by the greedy who want to survive (and they'll happily sacrifice one another to ensure it).

Not only are you an ignorant nutter with an extremely limited view of the world, you're wrong.

From my experience of living long term in all three of: Australia, USA and UK, there is far more actual power in the people's hands (at election time) in Australia than either of the other two.

Partly this is because Australia's population is quite low, so there's less 'layers' between the wishes of the people, and the politicians (one example: the Prime Minister of Australia happened walked right past me on the street in Sydney few weeks ago... but in America you will almost NEVER just 'happen to see the President' when you go out to lunch). Hell the previous Prime Minister went on a walk around the suburbs every morning and waved and said hi to people. Sure he had a few bodyguards trailing him, but nothing like the 30 guards, 20 armored vehicles etc that accompany the US President around.

But a bigger reason for this is the fact that there are very very strict laws against corporate influence on politics in Australia. And there are similarly tough regulations surrounding what companies are allowed to do when it comes to advertising, donations, etc etc. Far more stringent than in America. Sure there's still lobbyists and things in Australia. But realistically, the corporate world can't do much in politics in Australia, and they know it. In America, it's all about big business and corporations when it comes to setting the political agenda. In Australia, the issues that average people care about really can decide the elections. (See: Work Choices)

A final but more minor point is that we do have third and fourth political parties that actually matter. They aren't enough to actually take power away from the big two. But due to the preferences system that we have in Australia, it means that minor parties can influence things in Parliament and aren't just there to make up the numbers. In the US however there really is no serious alternative to the Dems and the Republicans.

Americans like to point to Australia and say "ha, your democracy isn't as good as yours, you don't even directly elect your head of State!". This is true. Our head of State is technically the Queen of England, and our Prime Minister isn't voted in by the people. But in practice, the Australian system reflects the wishes of the public a lot more quickly and more closely. (The Canadian system is like this too I believe, although I haven't spent enough time in Canada to comment).

Disclaimer: I'm Australian by birth but have lived 8+ years in the US and 4+ years in the UK. I also hold dual US and Australian citizenship, and love both countries dearly. Both have their strong and weak points. But when it comes to government, I'm afraid the Australian system is just... better.

The big difference between Australia's responsiveness to the populace and the U.S.'s is population size. Australia has a population of about 22 million. The U.S. has a population of over 300 million. The smaller the population the more responsive a democratic government is to the will of the people. As the population gets larger the easier it is to play off people who care about one issue against people who care about other issues. Additionally, as the population gets larger the more people one needs to get

I second this actually. I was born in Australia, lived 13 years in the states, have dual citizenship and have voted in both countries. In addition to all the above points, things are also a lot easier to change here for whatever reason. The government puts something unpleasant in, they get caned in the next election and the new government takes it out, we get a few years of garbage and then it goes away. We also have a tendency down here to take great joy in taking folks who get to uppity down a peg regardl

A lot of it is to do with the pipes into the country. Most overseas content comes in over a fairly limited couple of cables. Looking up the local stuff doesn't cost them anything, but overseas content does, hence the per byte charges. This is also why they don't particularly care about p2p traffic. If it's local, they get the high fees for practically zero expense, if it's overseas you pay the same as any other user, and they get to claim the upload on peering agreements.

A lot of people like to think there's a huge conspiracy re the internet here. But there's not. It's simply a product of the fact that:

a) We are English speaking. We therefore source the VAST majority of our internet content from other English speaking locations (mostly the US). In the US, 90% of IP traffic is domestic and never leaves the US. In Australia, 90% of IP traffic has to be pulled all the way FROM the US.

b) We are an island with a small population, a very long way from anywhere else. There are a h

Yes, you do have a say. I contributed to the Green Paper on the Service Card, which was in danger of being owned by Motorola and Gemsmart. It was people like me, giving valid clear technically correct explanations of the failings of that "backdoor ID card" that resulted in it being a no-go.
When have YOU been a part of the process - there's nothing to stop you! Have you petitioned parliament? Written to your local member? Shown up to ALP branch meetings and asked polite, informed but pointed questions?
It's when everyone says "we have no power over the people we elect" that we give up our power. Fact is that if enough people go on record (by the 3 means I listed above) then politicians listen, purely out of self interest.

Fact is that if enough people go on record (by the 3 means I listed above) then politicians listen, purely out of self interest.

Exactly,

When push comes to shove you can always count on a polly's survival instinct. All you have to do is convince them they are about to lose their job. Most people have no say in government because they don't get involved. Become part of an interest group like the EFA or a the very least write a letter. All Western Australian's got a say in Daylight Savings changes earlier in the year, despite the fact it did not pass (I voted YES) I did get my say. There is no way you can say you cant change government, most people just say that to console themselves with the fact they never tried.

yet illegal activities that are screened by the relative anonymity of the Internet are a persistent problem

Yup. Eating Bread suffocates 98% babies, Water is responsible for 100% of drownings, and kitchen knives are responsible for 80% of knife deaths. Shall we ban all these?Quoting statistics is easy, even a fool like you can do it.Making it relative to something else is harder.

Screaming about our loss of freedoms and privacy through draconian laws does not solve the problem of illegal activities, because the government and industry are not the root of the problem.

Oh... and you say the laws are magically drafted and magically passed by fairies masquerading as MPs?

Perfectly natural activities (like file copying) are only illegal, because some guys in a building called Parliament have decided that it should be that way. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is the copyright law that criminalizes a large portion of the Internet population? How about reforming that law, or at least adapting it to the 21st century? Like, you know, legalizing private non-commercial copying, as the various Pirate Parties in other countries are already asking for?

Yes, I am aware of the open-source arguments, and yes, I have contributed to OS projects. But I have also taken time off work to try to create something new. I had to forego three months' salary, to do it. I simply could not afford to give it away for free, because, strangely enough, I couldn't find a landlord who'd give me her house for free, or a supermarket that would donate food to the cause.

That's indeed a very good argument. As a published book author, I know how much time it takes to write, review